Lullaby for Aching Hearts
by mvdiva
Summary: Jet reflects approx. one week after the events of Ep. 26. Slight J&F.


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Disclaimer: Cowboy Bebop and all its characters belong to Sunrise, Inc. Please don't sue.

Alrighty, I've been reading around on some of the less-traditional CB websites, and I came across an interesting idea. Some people out there seem to be convinced that Jet and Faye were meant for each other. Admittedly, I didn't even want to consider the fact that Faye was supposed to be with anyone but Spike, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Sorry for anything that comes across as OOC, but when you think about it, all fan fiction is out of character. It may not be exactly what CB's creators had in mind, but old softy Jet fits the bill for me. In fact, I'm starting to like the idea. I still love Spike and always will, but this one is for the Black Dog.

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Lullaby for Aching Hearts

These stupid trees are more trouble than they're worth sometimes. I curse again as the pruning shears in my hand slips and cuts off a vital branch of one of the mini bonsai trees in my garden. 

Dammit! This will never do. Once the shears are lying safely back in their tray, I look at my right hand. It's shaking slightly as I hold it in front of my face. The familiar whorls and lines on my fingertips waver and blur slightly before I close my eyes. 

Great. Now my eyes can't focus anymore. You'd think that even an old geezer like me could stand to miss a few nights of sleep and still get by alright. As I stand, muscles and joints creak in harmony, making me wince. I smile tiredly at my poor bonsai collection before shutting the light off.

The hallway from my little greenhouse to the main room is filled with the memory of voices. Ed and Ein barking and laughing…or was it the other way around? Sometimes you would swear that dog was more mature than the kid. It's too quiet around here without them.

Since…Spike left, there's been too much silence. I'm only a little surprised that Faye hasn't left. All the months we were together, hardly a day went by when she didn't threaten to go somewhere she'd be appreciated more. 

I paused in the doorway to the main room on the Bebop. Faye sat on the couch, her back to me, and smoking. It was all she'd done lately, at least as far as I'd seen. . I moved to sit at the opposite end of the couch from her. She stared straight ahead, apparently completely focused on the soap opera playing quietly on the vid screen.

Barely a word had passed between us since that day, almost a week ago now. _Has it really been that long already?_ I rubbed my head. Faye wasn't talking to me. That was plain enough to see. Maybe she blamed me for not going after him. Hell, I still blame myself. Spike was my partner for three years, but I still didn't even know anything about his past, except for a few names. And yet, I knew him well enough to know the look in his eyes.

He didn't want to go. He was begging me to stop him; make him turn away from this violent suicide. But I didn't. It's worthless to try and figure out why I did what I did, seeing as how it's the past now. But the thought is still enough to keep me awake at night.

In the night cycle of the ship, systems are powered down, making everything even more quiet than it is during the day. A single breath is amplified in your ears, and sobs carry even farther. Specifically Faye's sobs.

Those sleepless nights as I lay awake, she sobbed in her room. The first time I heard it, I didn't understand what the noise was. When things connected in my brain, I almost went to her door. Fear kept me from knocking, although I wanted to more than anything.

Imagine that-the Black Dog afraid to knock on the door of a woman half his size. My ISSP buddies would never have let me live it down if they had known. But that night as I stood in front of her door, I couldn't knock. 

Faye in a volatile mood would almost be welcome to the smoking shadow sitting at the other end of the couch now. I sighed and crossed my legs, sneaking a glance at her. Smoke curled up in wisps around her head. The flesh surrounding her eyes was red and puffy, although surreptitiously covered with a layer of makeup. 

I wanted to say something to her, but I couldn't. _Fear bares its teeth again._ I thought, and smirked to myself. Just then, the vid screen flashed a mug shot of a bounty, and Faye jerked back. Since Big Shot had been cancelled, ISSP had taken to posting wanted ads in the hopes that bounties would get caught, with or without the show.

"He's really gone, isn't he?" Faye whispered quietly. She never took her eyes off the screen as I nodded sadly. "Yeah, he's gone." I managed. _But we're still alive Faye. Don't you get it? We are alive, and Spike is dead. _ I wanted to scream at her, shake her until the glazed look left her face. 

Abruptly she stood, scattering cigarette ashes onto the floor. I watched them flutter slowly to the ground like gray snow, and then Faye was in my face. Her emerald eyes glimmered with tears, and I scrunched down into the couch, desperate to get away from this demon. 

" THEN TELL ME WHY I STILL FEEL HIM JET!! TELL ME WHY HE'S STILL HERE! AND HERE!" She moved to touch her heart, and then gestured wildly around the room. I grabbed her arm, and forced her to sit down beside me. She sunk down, sapped of energy. "Why is he still here?" She whispered quietly.

Without conscious thought, I pulled her to my chest, and put an arm around her. Surprisingly, she didn't pull away. Her dark purple hair spread out in a fan over my chest and I touched her head. I stroked her head as she cried, bewildered at the transformation from Poker Alice to this broken woman. 

As she cried, I felt something stir in me that sat, dormant, since the pocket watch Alisa gave me stopped ticking. It wasn't a heavenly choir that came, singing hallelujah, just a realization. I loved Faye. Since the moment Spike and I laid eyes on her in that casino, something just…clicked inside of me. 

I can't explain it any better that that. All I knew was that Tweedledee and Tweedledum had left, and Spike had abandoned us to go die somewhere on a dusty red planet. And somewhere, buried in all that hurt and anger, was Faye. Oh, I may be old, but I'm certainly not senile yet. I know she doesn't love me. Can't love me, even. And it's all because of a certain fuzzy-haired skinny guy who I called 'Partner'. 

Faye's sobs had been reduced to quiet tears as I lay in quiet contemplation, giving her the only kind of comfort that I knew how to give. When the tears stopped altogether, she didn't move to stand up and leave, but only lay there, tracing idle circles on my coverall with an elegantly manicured nail. And I didn't mind. All the times I had fixed her damned ship with little (okay, without MUCH) yelling, she had never given me more than a small 'thank you'. 

All her words were saved for Spike. Whether they were fighting or just insulting each other, I saw the way she looked at him. It made me a little jealous, but I figured that my job was to be the father figure of our little family, and left them to their bickering while I kept my mind on other things. 

But now, some small part of me wondered if our current…whatever was just a one-time thing. A mutual comfort that would never again be discussed. Faye's fingernail ceased its idle circles on my chest, and when I looked down, she was breathing evenly, fast asleep.

I sighed; shifting her weight slightly so I could get at the vid remote which had somehow ended up wedged between the cushion and her back. A little voice in me kept repeating not to take for granted what I had now, but I silenced it by flipping channels. The soap opera, so rudely interrupted by the bounty ad, had been replaced by another just like it, only with different actors.

Faye moaned quietly in her sleep, and I lightly rubbed her back. She had probably slept as well as I had in the last few days, judging by the slight circles under her eyes. An ancient lullaby that my mother used to sing to me as a child surfaced in my memory; something about birds and diamonds rings. The words mostly escaped me, so I settled for hummed the tune lightly as I stroked her back. 

We lay like that for another twenty minutes or so; minutes that I treasured until the real kicker. At one point I had stopped humming, hoping that Faye was getting some of the deep sleep she deserved, when she startled me by mumbling something unintelligible under her breath. I smiled and leaned closer, intent on finding out who or what the enigmatic Faye Valentine was dreaming about.

"Hum it again, Spike. Again for me…" She whispered. 


End file.
